The navigator
by Charlotte Braddon
Summary: Ursula le Guin intended the archipelago culture of Earthsea to be non-European. Yet most of the cultural references come from European myth. Here is a version based on the mythology of a different sea-faring culture.


**Return from paradise**

The Island of Toroa in the East is on no charts. No fishing fleet sails to it, no merchant trades with it, and even the mage explorers have not spotted it in living memory. Grizzled seafarers, meeting in the taverns of Cosk and Astowell may sometimes mention the island in their cups, before moving on to more weighty matters.

Nobody knows how the ancestors of the Navigator found their way to Toroa. Their legends speak of great wizards beyond the Western Horizon, but these are almost forgotten even by the Navigators, who faithfully passed on their craft from successor to successor.

It is said that the Navigators could cross from one end of the world to the other. They could find land by reading the currents, wind and waves, birds and fish, as well as the sun and the stars. At sea the Navigators never slept. They kept their place in the front of a waka or a flotilla of wakas, in a trance, occasionally whispering directions to the helmsman in the stern.

The present Navigator, Kope by name, had buried his mentor several years previously, and in keeping with tradition had taken on a young boy, Makeatutara by name, as an apprentice. Makeatutara had shown promise as a sea-farer. He it was who later trained the great Maui, perhaps the greatest seafarer Toroa has ever known. Thus was the skill of the Navigator passed on.

Like all Navigators, Kope had been required to take voyages of initiation in his youth. On one of these Kope and his mentor had sailed for several days in two sailing waka, out of sight of land. Kope's mentor had left Kope and instructed him to sail back.

It was on that occasion that Kope had met the Wanderer, in a sloop-built sail boat, skimming along the water in a wind of his own making. The Wanderer had greeted Kope as a fellow sea-farer and the two had conversed at some length. What the two sailors from different traditions had found to talk about, Kope kept to himself.

Since his voyages of trial, Kope's life had been one of ease. He had been occupied only with the occasional journey of exploration, discovering new islets, little more than lumps of rock, and shoals of fish. This was knowledge for its own sake, the past-time of wealthy chiefs. For the island of Toroa was rich and fertile. Upwelling currents, volcanic soil, coconut palms and lush forests ensured prosperity for all.

The people of Toroa were replete and sated. In the manner of such people, their population grew with their appetites. Skirmishes between neighbouring tribes for fishing rights, coconut groves and plantations escalated into full scale wars. Over-planting and cutting of forests for fuel, ever larger wakas and pointless totems stripped the land. The islanders had developed an appetite for grain-fed flesh, and this required further felling of the forests. As a result, the fast running rivers ran brown not clear, staining the reefs, and ugly gashes appeared on the bush-covered hills.

Kope gave warning of how this destruction would change the Equilibrium of the island. The trees provided the rains that moistened the land. The island would become dry and desolate. The brown stain that oozed through the reefs would choke the kelp forests, starving the fish that the islanders depended on.

Nobody heeded the Navigator. The once hardy seafaring nation had grown soft and slug-like. A tribe of seafarers that once would have stayed all night in an open boat in an ice blizzard now burned wood for heat on the summer evenings as they gorged themselves on the literal fat of the land.

One morning, Kope called a meeting of the Tribal Chiefs. Such meetings usually occurred only when the island was in great danger. All chiefs turned up, dressed in their formal feather cloaks. When all were present, and the ceremonies of challenge and welcome had been exchanged, Kope spoke up. He was holding the staff of his office, a black wooden branch with a green swordfish carved on the pommel.

"The weather portends a disaster such as we have never seen," he said. "In more than one moon, but less than two moons hence, the earth itself beneath the waters will crack, fire will roar from the sea bed, and a wave like a thunderbolt will sweep our island clear.

There was silence. Some tried to argue.

"How shall we survive, old man, if the Earth itself is to be torn asunder," said one chief, whose territory included rich fishing grounds near the only sizeable estuary on the island. "Perhaps it is time for you to step aside for your apprentice."

"You speak of what you don't know," said Kope. "The Earth will be torn asunder indeed, but it will be several weeks sailing from here."

"How are we to be safe in our boats," asked another chief. "Any wave that would swamp our island home would certainly overwhelm even the strongest waka."

"The wave travels over the deeps," replied Kope. "Although its power is as immense as the legendary dragon, if there is a depth of water under the boat, the wave passes under it. The wave only does damage in shallow water."

There was some head shaking and muttering. The Earth cracking and breathing fire. A wave like a dragon on land but a lamb on sea. How could such things be? The night was livened by the rhetoric of fierce debate.

But as dawn broke, the debate shifted in favour of the Navigator. He was aided by two wise women, Kura and Kila, who had known Kope as a boy. These women reminded the chiefs of the mana due to Kope for his knowledge and the tradition it represented.

So the result was that Kope's warning was heeded. Supplies were procured, water skins mended, trees hollowed out, and a month later a flotilla of rafts and waka, led by Kope, sailed out to look for new land. As tradition demanded, Kope's swordfish staff was buried under the dunes in the high tide. A new staff would be carved for a new land.

The voyage was a testing time for the flotilla. As they sailed with the prevailing wind, Kope's skills and that of his apprentice were both tested to their limits. Thanks however to Kope's ability to detect storm squalls, schools of flying fish and mats of edible seaweeds, and Makeatutara's developing ability to pull together the stragglers from his position in the rear waka, there was not even one death among the people.

The oceans were teeming with all kinds of life, except human. No craft was discovered through all their long voyage. Occasionally Kope would guide the islanders to small islets where they could fill their water skins in pools of fresh water and rest for a several days. On the largest of these, the islanders rested for a full half year. But no substantial land masses were found in that vast ocean, and eventually the islanders had to move on.

The rigours of the voyage, and the necessity to work together as a team hardened the men, women and children of Toroa. By the third year at sea there was no surplus fat on any body, and no surplus spite in any soul.

Kope chanted a special prayer, and muttered to the helmsman in his boat. Makeatutara, whose eyes were the sharpest, thought he could detect the faintest speck on the far horizon, which could have been a boat. Kura and Kila, more knowledgeable than the rest, noticed the ways the stars seemed to slowly veer around over the next few days. But the wind remained steady, the waka fleet skimmed along with the wind, and Kope kept his fleet sheltered and provisioned. The three more observant islanders kept their own counsel.

After several more moons sailing, land was spotted. A decent sized island, one that had fertile land and upwelling currents, with lush growth of secondary forest. The rigours and responsibilities of the voyage had aged Kope prematurely, and when the islander had landed on the island and completed the rituals required for setting foot on new land, he was happy to pass his staff of office to Makeatutara.

When the colony had been living on the new island for several years, this time in a less profligate manner, Kope's spirit was taken to its final resting place. Kura and Kila wandered to the end of the dunes and chanted what they remembered of the Spell of Summoning.

They found what they were looking for. The eye of a cracked wooden swordfish peering at them from the hole they had dug. They remembered then the legends of the Mage Wind that always blew from behind a waka, whatever direction the world's wind may blow.

"Shall we tell our men-folk?" Kura asked, holding up the pommel.

"They don't need to know," said Kila. "We are living in peace now. Let's leave it this way."

"And what about Makeatutara. Does he need to know?"

"He knows already," said Kila. "Did you notice him staring at the horizon that time Kope summoned the Mage Wind?"

"True enough," replid Kura. "And if he doesn't know, he doesn't deserve to."

Kura replaced the swordfish and the two women filled in the hole.

##


End file.
